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Month: October 2005

If you’re up on Saturday morning and want to rediscover your childhood (or help a child find theirs) you could do much worse than tune in to Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!, everything you ever wanted from a Saturday morning cartoon show. The best line in the opening credits is: “As I was exploring the outskirts of the city I discovered an abandoned super robot”. It’s called Jetix in the Channel 7 guide. Enjoy!

Oh, backtracking. Last night I ran into my high school formal partner at a cool warehouse rooftop party in West End. That’s why you go to parties in West End, isn’t it?

There’s a weird vibe around town this evening. People acting crazy, driving badly. You know. On Triple J’s Hack I hear some statistics that make me furious. So angry I feel compelled to swear repeatedly, so little kids shouldn’t read this and everyone else has been warned.

The federal government (pack of arseholes, especially that turd Vanstone) pulled an election-winning stunt last time around; they convinced 77% of Australia to turn away a boat full of refugees. They succeeded in this xenophobic exercise because:

They lied about the refugees throwing their babies overboard to be rescued (it didn’t happen).

They called (still call) the refugees “boat people”. Thank that red-haired moron for pushing that angle.

Australia has a healthy racist streak.

But 77%. Jesus Fucking Christ.

Anyway, the stats which made me see red relate to what they’ve done to turn the boat away. The arseholes set up offshore detention centres (i.e. prisons) to complement the many we’ve already got onshore. It’s how much money they’ve spent on this horrible exercise. They’ve just decided that 25 of the 36 potential refugees are actual refugees. Big surprise. It’s cost them *millions of dollars per refugee, per year* to find this out. They’re now finishing off a new refugee prison on Christmas Island that’s costing $330 million. That’s not counting running costs. With maybe just 50 potential refugees this last year, it’s hardly worth it.

It’s simple maths. Just let them all in. Even including any more refugees who might come, we can afford to put them all on the dole for life if we can afford this bullshit. Plus we’d actually be helping people and offsetting the very low Australian birth rate that the arseholes are so concerned about.

This is not difficult stuff. So far we’ve had racism in action, and not enough swearing.